UTexts Launches New Website

Posted by UTexts

After a long time waiting, the new website is finally up and running. As with any new website, bugs and problems are to be expected. Should any problems arise with the website we ask that you contact support as soon as you can. Some new features on the website include:

A messaging System
This will allow users to message you when they are interested in your textbook, which is a security upgrade since the old way provided contact information.
Favorites
If you find a text you're interested in you can now add it to a favorites list so you can find it easily the next time your logged on. Add and remove textbooks from your favorites is easy and simple. This will not reserve a book however, and it can still be sold before you contact the owner.
Support System
We have upgraded our support system to include 3 new primary methods of support. A FAQ that will allow easy look up of the most frequently asked questions. If we keep getting asked repeated times a question, we will post it here, along with the answer. A ticket system that will allow you to submit a question that we can answer next time one of our support staff is available. Last but not least, we have a Live Help System which is powered by IRC. This will allow you to chat with us live when available for live help.

There are many more new features that we hope you will enjoy and we are always working on way of upgrading the website to make the exchange of textbooks easy and simple. Some future upgrades we are planning are"

Custom PDF Posters
This will allow you to print a poster to place in your school, which promotes your textbook as well as the website. Our current plan is to make the poster for one text, or up to five different ones on one poster.
Upload Covers
Upload cover images of textbooks to the website. The old way you could upload the image while adding your textbook. This we have removed for a number of reasons. We are working on a way to upload the covers without adding a textbook. This will help users who have to no textbooks to still contribute to the website.
Facebook App
This will allow users to view your textbooks from your profile on Facebook and vice versa. Facebook is a powerful advertising agent and this will allow you to advertise your textbooks to all your Facebook friends. If you have no textbooks listed, random textbooks will be displayed from other users.

Those are the primary things we are working on making progress when we can. We have no issues preventing the completion of these ideas yet, so we will hopefully have then finished by the end of the summer, or hopefully sooner. If you have any ideas please don't hesitate to send them our way. while we may not implement everyone's ideas we will do our best to review the possibility of them all.